It’s one of the great mysteries of modern Ottawa – how can a Conservative government that claims to venerate its veterans screw up so badly and so often when it comes to their welfare in civilian life?

It’s one of the great mysteries of modern Ottawa – how can a Conservative government that claims to venerate its veterans screw up so badly and so often when it comes to their welfare in civilian life?

The report of the Auditor General on mental health services for veterans, released Tuesday, goes a long way to answering that question.

In essence, the report suggests the Department of Veterans Affairs is run like an insurance company – minus the facade of customer service that the industry presents.

Michael Ferguson, the Auditor General, was a little more diplomatic. “The findings we have presented today…underscore the disconnect that happens when departments don’t have a clear understanding of whether the services they are providing are meeting the needs of their clienteles,” he said.

As Canada poured more troops into the mission in Afghanistan, the department saw an increase in the number of its clients suffering from mental health conditions – from less than 2% in 2002 to almost 12% in 2014.

For eligible veterans, the department pays for various services not covered under provincial health plans, principally through the Disability Benefits Program.

Mr. Ferguson’s team looked at whether Veterans Affairs has provided timely access to those benefits. The answer was a resounding “no” – in large measure because of the disconnect between the perceptions of veterans and those of the department.

From the veteran’s point of view, the process begins when he or she starts the application – an overly complex paper maze, in the auditor’s view, that also requires an assessment from a doctor or psychiatrist. The average length of that process is 16 weeks, the report said.

From the perspective of Veterans Affairs, the process starts once it has received the completed application. The department has a target of completing 80% of applications within 16 weeks from the date it receives a completed file – a target it missed by 5%.

But that process takes no account of the fact that veterans with mental health problems have already been waiting for an average of four months for help.

Anticipating another kicking in the media, the government tried to get ahead of the news last weekend by allocating another $200-million over six years to remove some of the barriers to timely eligibility decisions. The report suggested delays in obtaining medical and service records from National Defence was a major problem, so more money will be spent on digitizing health records. The auditor also said long wait times at operational stress injury clinics were also a problem (average wait times for a referral are about three months), prompting the government to say it will recruit more psychiatrists and psychologists.

But more money alone won’t repair the almost complete breakdown in relations between the department and a clientele that considers it a heartless bureaucracy with the compassion of an icicle.

One statistic that jumped from the report was a 24% refusal rate for veterans applying for disability benefits.

That means 3,684 soldiers who believed they needed benefits to deal with a mental health condition were refused on first application (843 were awarded benefits on appeal).

It suggests not only that the process is too complex but that it is too onerous.

It means that 2,841 potentially disturbed veterans have been cast adrift – they are not tracked by Veterans Affairs and nobody knows whether they are danger to themselves or anyone else.

There’s no doubt that things have improved considerably since retired-general Roméo Dallaire returned from Rwanda in the mid-1990s and was given three weeks leave and told the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder would go away if he worked hard.

But neither Veterans Affairs, nor the department of National Defence, have lived up to their rhetoric that the military “family” is there to look after its own.

The systems have been put in place but no-one has asked the men and women in the front-lines of the mental health battle if they are working.

Mr. Ferguson’s report said Veterans Affairs has developed a mental health strategy but does not collect information or report on the effectiveness of it. The department made a commitment in 2009 to develop performance measures to assess the success of its strategy but, five years later, has failed to do so.

What little reporting is done is focused on the number of veterans served, and the timeliness of service, rather than on the quality of that service or whether it has improved the lives of veterans.

Similarly, soldiers returning to civilian life suggest National Defence remains so focused on universality of service that those not fit to deploy are effectively thrown out of the military. At that point, soldiers say the army leadership outsources the problem to an administrative system designed to take care of injured soldiers.

Mr. Dallaire talked of the “Darwinianism” in the forces, from leadership who can be ruthless with those who don’t meet performance levels. Soldiers who find themselves suffering from anger, impatience and anxiety suddenly find themselves abandoned by the military “family”.

Men and women who put their lives on the line in Afghanistan have ended up being sidelined and shunned.

For many, the disillusionment is complete after they have been released and are forced to engage with the rigid and inflexible bureaucracy of Veterans Affairs.

The department seems to operate like a broken fax machine – permanently stuck on “transmit”. The suggestion of Canada’s Auditor-General is that it should try switching to “receive”.

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